Tag Archives: marketing

Multi-channel, omni-channel, whatever you call the current approach to marketing, the basic idea is the same. You need to reach homebuyers and sellers wherever and whenever they’re looking, and listing prospects want to know that’s what you’re doing.

“From websites and email, to social media and print, every channel presents an opportunity to market,” explains Adweek’s SocialTimes blog.

That’s a lot of channels to cover, and each has its pros and cons. Digital is great for immediacy and reach, while printed ads and content seem to be easier for consumers to process and better for brand recall.

Author and science-based marketing expert Roger Dooley sums up recent research in a Forbes post titled “Paper Beats Digital in Many Ways, According to Neuroscience.”

“Despite the enormous migration to electronic media, neuroscience research shows that paper-based content and ads offer special advantages in connecting with our brains.”

Dooley continues: “Rather than an all-digital world, it appears that a multi-channel approach that leverages the unique benefits of paper with the convenience and accessibility of digital will perform best.”

The channels work together, with print feeding digital and digital enhancing print.

Your magazine ad gets potential clients’ attention, then can lead them online to your listings or prompt them to text for more photos and info. Each text also generates a lead for you.

“Where we’ve had a great print product, with a smart free distribution model, we have seen a fantastic halo effect upon our digital metrics,” Justin Etheridge, executive vice president of entertainment guide Time Out North America, recently told the Chicago Tribune. The company’s Chicago publication returned to print this fall after a two-year digital-only hiatus.

Homes & Land gives you that great print product with a smart distribution model, along with a presence on more than 20 websites, social media tools, virtual tours, featured online listings, permanent text codes for advertised properties and more.

Multi-channel? You’ve got it covered.

For more on getting the most from Homes & Land, contact your Publisher.

You know homebuyers and sellers 35 and younger grew up digital and turn to the Internet for real estate information. When it comes to communications, it’s not surprising they also trend digital. NAR notes in its "Generational Trends Report" that young buyers put importance on your communicating through emails and texts, while older buyers are more interested in phone calls.

But Millennials can surprise you. For one thing, they love print.

"Textbook makers, bookstore owners and college student surveys all say Millennials still strongly prefer print for pleasure and learning," the Washington Post reports in an article titled "Why digital natives prefer reading in print." Why do they? Print doesn’t beep, and it lets you relax and absorb what’s on the page.

The same factors play into our continuing attraction to print catalogs, which retailers such as JC Penney have found they can’t afford to give up, and to magazines. An amazing 91 percent of Americans read a magazine in the past six months. Younger Americans, 18 to 24, read more magazines than any other age group.

That’s where Homes & Land comes in. We’re a print magazine, a catalog of homes. We’re also a digital player with a website and easy-to-use online tools. We’re a multichannel, integrated marketing company that gets your listings to everywhere your customers are, no matter their age.

"So, I just wanted to let you know. This week I have been going through all of my websites, ads, everything … lol. And what I have found very interesting is that, going through these 30-some-odd websites, when I searched for myself before logging in … I’m either nowhere to be found, my information is incorrect, or the profile just looks plain flat stupid. When I got onto HomesAndLand.com — everything is correct!!! When I searched for myself in 73034, bam, there I was. When I clicked on details, bam, there they were … good job!!!!"

— DAVID DOBSON, Realtor/broker with ERA Courtyard
in Oklahoma City, Okla., and Homes & Land advertiser

The newly released National Association of Realtors’ "Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends Report 2015" finds that Millennials, also called Generation Y, made up the largest group of recent homebuyers for the second year in a row. Thirty-two percent of recent buyers were from that crew, born 1980 to 1995 and now age 35 to 20. They made up 68 percent of first-time buyers.

Of all those Millennials, 90 percent bought their home through a real estate professional. HousingWire notes that Millennials "used an agent to purchase their home at a higher share than all other generations."

After Millennials, the NAR report lists the next largest group of recent homebuyers as Younger and Older Boomers, age 51-68; followed by Generation X, 36-50; and then the Silent Generation, 69 and older.

THE MILLENNIAL MUST-HAVE: What do home-buying Millennials want? A place to wash their clothes. According to a recent survey by the National Association of Home Builders, 55 percent said they wouldn’t buy a new home that didn’t have a separate laundry room. Also on Millennials’ most-wanted list: storage, such as linen closets, walk-in pantries and garage space.

The Mortgage Bankers Association reports that purchase loan applications rose the last week of March for the twelfth week in a row after 53 weeks of declines, increasing 5.7 percent week over week (seasonally adjusted) and 7.6 percent year over year.

The continued good news in applications and other indicators shows a housing market with forward momentum, concludes financial services company Raymond James: "Positive data points such as tight existing home inventory and a seven-year high in February’s new home sales pace help reinforce the positive feedback on the current spring selling season from our early channel checks. Continued sub-4% mortgage rates and the adoption of the 97% LTV program by Freddie Mac in late March should further expand credit availability and provide a boost to the housing market."

Ready to get your business revved up and roaring for 2015? Then it’s good to have a plan, and lots of smart people out there have helpful advice on setting goals and staying on track in the field of real estate.

Right-size those goalsThe top goal on the list of Inman News contributor Wade Vander Molen is to “set several smaller, realistic goals.” Instead of jotting down one massive annual achievement, such as doubling sales in 2015, set smaller quarterly goals, he suggests. Like breaking a long to-do list into smaller, less-daunting chunks, setting reasonable goals can help keep you focused and successful over the long haul. Read more

Put yourself in picturesEver dreamed of being in movies? Vander Molen urges you to step up this year and star in your own. Introduce yourself to potential clients and give them a chance to, well, just plain like you with a short video uploaded to YouTube. The platform is free to use, and videos show up with other types of content in Google searches.

If you’ve got the “you” video covered but would like to keep making movies as part of your marketing efforts, the article “Invest in evergreen video: the marketing gift that keeps on giving” offers some great ideas and tips for creating videos that will bring clients to you again and again. Read more

Know your business’s heart
Of course, clients are the beating heart of any real estate agent’s business, and Vander Molen and other realty experts hammer on the importance of organizing and updating your contact database as the year begins. After all, it’s hard to manage client communications if you don’t have a good grip on who the clients are.

The RISMedia article “Your 2015 Business Plan — In Less Than 5 Minutes” offers a list of questions to help agents get a better picture of what they should be doing better this year, and many of those questions focus squarely on how well you communicate with buyers and sellers. For example, at No. 3, the article asks: “Do you have a scheduled time each day or week when you communicate with your clients, contacts or friends? Do you do this consistently?” Read more

Here’s To Happy Sellers

Speaking of client contact, a copy of Homes & Land featuring their home is like a wonderful little gift in the mail for your advertised home sellers. When you place an ad with us, our Client Contact program sends each of your advertised sellers a copy of the magazine and a flyer promoting you and your marketing efforts. We also explain how your sellers can go online and see their property featured on HomesAndLand.com.

“Our sellers love it. They love to see their pictures in the magazine, they love the glossy print, and they especially love the at-home direct mail. When it goes out to the public and they receive their own copy of it, they’re excited about it.”

Text codes on listings advertised in Homes & Land magazine offer potential homebuyers a quick way to get more information on a property. Codes also pay off for agents, allowing you to capture a lead when a house-hunter expresses interest in a listing.

To make using text codes as easy as possible for potential buyers, it’s smart to publish texting instructions in any advertisement that includes listings with text codes, as illustrated below. For added interest, the page-top instructions could say “FOR MORE INFORMATION AND PHOTOS, TEXT 81035 THEN TEXT CODE.” While texting instructions can be found elsewhere in each Homes & Land magazine, placing the info right on your ad offers consumers the clearest path to immediate action — and gives you the best chance for leads.

Here are a couple of other best practices for text codes in printed real estate listings:

For the most effective presentation, place each listing’s text code on the listing photo.

Keep listing information short and concise. That way, house-hunters have a reason to text to learn more.

NOTES FROM ALL OVER

Buying Looks Better All The Time

Business website MarketWatch does the math and finds that buying now appears to be about twice as affordable as renting. The calculation’s cost of owning a home does not include property taxes and homeowners insurance, but it still has the power to wow, and renting appears to be getting more expensive all the time. Read more

And Now Let Us Peer Into The Future

No one knows for sure what the future will hold for real estate this year, but experts are doing their best to guess, and quite a few of them say 2015 is looking good. Click an item below to read the article referenced: